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Time and Place: Tony Parsons' life in a London bedsit

A leaking bedroom, a fungus-filled bathroom and regular police raids: the writer Tony Parsons recalls life at his London bedsit during the glory days of punk  when he and Julie Burchill were still talking

Between 1976 and 1979, I lived in a bedsit on the ground floor of 22 Rosebery Gardens, in Crouch End, north London. I got the room when I started my job at the NME [New Musical Express]. Before that, I had been living in Billericay, in Essex, with my parents and working in an Islington gin distillery. I had written a novel, The Kids, which was published in the summer of '76, the year punk started.

When Nick Logan, the editor of NME, advertised for "hip young gunslingers" to write about punk, I sent in my book. Nick didn't read it, but the fact that I'd had one published, and everybody else was sending their little typewritten or Biro reviews of Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith, got me the job. I looked the part, too. I'd been working the night shift for a few years, so I had the pale,